Humans On The Loop

Tim Freke is a philosopher and the author of thirty five books on comparative religion, gnostic scholarship, and nondual awakening. I met him as a fellow speaker at the Global Eclipse Gathering in Oregon last year and was immediately taken by his bright presence, wit, and grounded genius. In this episode, we talk about imagination as a product of the evolutionary process – that the soul and afterlife might be themselves emergent properties, rather than fixed or prior qualities, of our cosmos’ continuous unfolding creativity.http://timfreke.com/http://timfreke.com/ONLINE-TOUR/COSTS.aspxSubscribe on Apple Podcasts • Stitcher • Spotify • iHeart RadioJoin our Facebook Discussion GroupWe take a deep dive into the nature of time, reality, and creativity:• Is spiritual awakening the “leading edge” of evolution? (Not technology, as proposed by Kevin Kelly et al.?)• How story may be more fundamental to reality than we’ve believed• Is evolutionary “novelty” created, or simply discovered lying in wait?• A psychedelic view of time in which the present is a “handshake” between all possible pasts and all possible futures• Can we change the past, or merely our interpretation of it?• Soul as the fundament or medium of our intersubjectivity• Does the imagination operate as an information platform distinct from biology and physics?• Is Heaven an evolutionary emergent?• Is mind, imagination, and soul a different level of a hierarchy of being, or is it the interior experiential dimension ofwhat we call body and matter?• The relationship between subjective and objective in the time-stream• The ongoing trialogue between MG, Ken Wilber, and Bruce Damer on the origins of life and co-enactment of mind and matter “all the way down” through orders of complexity to the very quanta of our cosmos• The role of landscape and material agency in prebiological and postbiological inheritance (what comes before and after DNA?)• The Invention of Death• The proposed/hypothetical symbiosis of the soul and body • Tim’s critique of artificial consciousness and mind uploading• Can we ensoul technologies? If bodies can provide a vehicle for these nonphysical information patterns, can we engineer new bodies that invite souls into novel forms of incarnation?• Can you give something a soul by loving it?• The Question of Death• Evolution as the movement from unconsciousness unity through individuation into conscious individuated unity.Quotes:“Fundamentally, it’s a flow. It’s a process. The universe is not made of things.”“The philosophy that I’ve been exploring is that we have the wrong metaphor of time. That time doesn’t pass…but rather, time accumulates. And there is more past now than when we started this conversation…and the past hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s actually present, because everything that has ever happened is implicit in this moment.”“Every moment is the meeting of the possible, the ground of being, the potentiality, and everything that has been. But what this next moment can be, it’s limited. It must contain everything that’s happened before.”“The potentiality for the rainbow was there before eyes. But there was no rainbow.”“Technology is brilliant, but it’s nothing compared to the imagination.”“What I’m suggesting is that there is information on the soul level, which is nonphysical, which is a separate domain….we can’t reduce the body to physics, and we can’t reduce the soul to biology.”“The immortality of the soul has evolved as a continuation of the emergent and evolutionary universe. If you look at the history of what people have said about death, it’s almost like it’s evolving.”“There is no objective reality. There is, rather, objective information objectively and subjectively perceived.”“The body is discriminating information sensually, and then over the top of that, imagination is discriminating conceptually.”“Evolution itself has evolved. The physical universe did not happen through genetic mutation and natural selection.”“The more individual we become, the more we can understand the oneness.”“The whole philosophy, really, is a way of intellectually shoring up some almost childlike insights that arrived for me when I feel most deeply awake.”“Life is Good. Death is Safe. And what really matters is Love.”Support these vital conversations with a small monthly contribution:http://patreon.com/michaelgarfield Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week we go deep in part two of my epic four-hour conversation with documentarian and gonzo journalist Charles Shaw – one of this show’s most requested return guests.In part one, Charles laid out the map of the problem: a world in crisis, an age of epidemic trauma and addiction. In this episode, we get into his self-experimentation with sleep deprivation to understand the hallucinatory reality of America’s homeless, his journey of healing and recovery working with entheogens and military veterans, and how facing and embracing our darkness with humility and courage may be the only way we can prepare ourselves to make a meaningful contribution to our world. Get ready for a heady brew of grit, dark humor, grief and relief, and the luminous truth that awaits us on the other side of suffering…Support these vital conversations with a small monthly contribution:http://patreon.com/michaelgarfieldSubscribe on Apple Podcasts • Stitcher • Spotify • iHeart RadioJoin our Facebook Discussion Group––––––––––––––––Part One:https://www.patreon.com/posts/16862172Charles on Youtube & Vimeo:https://www.youtube.com/user/UnheardVoicesArchivehttps://vimeo.com/nomadcinema“Meeting The Self You Aren’t,” excerpts from my talks with Charles on the 2010 Light & Shadow Tour:https://evolution.bandcamp.com/album/meeting-the-self-you-arentIn October and November 2010, I traveled to thirty cities across the United States with journalist and documentary film-maker Charles Shaw on what we called "The Light & Shadow Tour." Half our time was spent filming interviews for his documentary about the War on Drugs and prison industrial complex; half our time was spent engaging audiences in deep discussion on the role of what psychologists call "the shadow" in personal and cultural transformation. The shadow is the part of ourselves so profoundly disowned that it shows up not as a quality of the self, but a trait of other people - not a choice that we are making, but a fate that imposes itself upon us. And to whatever degree we continue to refuse acknowledgment of our shadows, we remain the desperate victims of life instead of its joyous collaborators. It isn't easy to write a new story of the self - and to constantly re-write that story, when new truths come to us in the form of disarming companions, rude awakenings, and other surprises. But it is the work set out before us, if we are to live as whole people and give the most of ourselves to the birthing of a new and better world.––––––––––––––––IN THIS EPISODE WE DISCUSS:- How seeking validation for his work made him miserable, but he moved through the crisis and the victimhood into a new sense of completeness;- How service to other people in the trauma and addiction healing process as an intake and integration facilitator at ibogaine clinics accelerated his own healing;- The puzzle of figuring out how to use psychedelics as part of the healing process for people with diagnosed mental disorders, for whom the action of psychedelics is still poorly understood;- The homelessness and drug addiction situation in San Francisco, a city in crisis and an “open-air asylum”;- How he took a personal journey into the insanity and delusional states of America’s growing homeless population through a gonzo journalist’s approach of firsthand speed use and sleep deprivation (up to nine days at a time, under clinical supervision);- What he learned from three years of intense work with entheogens about the experience of death and the emotional process of moving through epochal transitions;- Hanging out with the “shadow people,” the characteristic hallucinations that externalize our own repressed internal voices when we start to lose our minds;- Our resistance to treatment and medicine, because keeping things the way they are is easier, because healing is an ordeal that challenges our identities;- Getting to the heart of the inquiry of “Why am I doing what I’m doing, here?” and “What do I WANT?”- What it is to lose touch with the young and hungry, eager and determined artist that we used to be and then to find it in a painful retrospective, and to realize it was because we were out there seeking validation, hustling, instead of giving our lives to the work;- Is the conversation to identify the problem, or to critique by creating and move toward solutions?- How do we even TRY and turn the global conversation toward concerted action for positive and universal (planetoid) change?- We manage to sneak some Blade Runner 2049 in there…- Aging and growing older in our culture, which nobody wants to talk about;- A Luke Skywalker-esque critique of now-institutional festival culture;- The Pluto Transit (!!!);- Hungry Ghosts;- Going into the heart of darkness with veterans on ayahuasca and understanding what teamwork can do for psychedelic healing;- His dialogue with ayahuasca about visiting his late sister in the underworld, and how he found his peace with her passing;- Dodging the psychedelic messiah complex;- The astrology of Jesus and Piscean martyrdom;- How study of the archetypes inform our passage through the phases of our lives;- The truth about how being a prophet is a difficult, unappreciated act, not this glamorous role we imagine it to be;- How his film The Plastic People, on Tijuana and the deportation crisis, led to sweeping reforms in Mexico and pissed off countless Trump supporters on Netflix;- The challenges of documenting the secret history of the ibogaine underground;- The futility of protest in the postmodern information warfare landscape;- What Charles thinks was REALLY going on at Standing Rock, and how it’s related to the infiltration and disruption of the Women’s Movement;- How the government collects and processes intelligence on protesters and other political dissidents;- Can you have fun and still effect social change?- How learning the surprising hidden story of his own family changed how Charles thinks about identity and the human condition;- Big Mind Process and listening to the voice of “The Damaged Self”;- And more!––––––––––––––––CHARLES QUOTES:“I thought I was doing the right thing the whole time. I thought I was fighting the good fight. But at some point, you have to ask yourself why you keep ending up in the same situations.”“We are way too liberal with our use of the word ‘insane’ in our culture. Most of what people call insane is just plain suffering. End of story.”“Power is power for a reason. You want to take that shit on firsthand, you’re going to get hurt. A lot of young people don’t realize that.”“Healing’s an ordeal, and that’s the thing: most people check out too early. They actually make a decision on some level to just rather live their lives in dysfunction and unhappiness and keep repeating patterns and cycles rather than go through it, and go through the ordeal… Healing Land requires a stay in Shadow Land. If you want to heal, you gotta go through Shadow Land first.”[With homeless delusional behavior] “The drugs aren’t the problem, it’s the lack of sleep.”“Hoffman tested the acid, Shulgin tested the MDMA, I tested the insanity.”“Even Elon Musk cannot save the world, and frankly, I don’t think he’s a very palatable human being to begin with, but people love him and he’s kind of a sacred cow and you can’t criticism him, but I say ALL these billionaires are shifty and you can’t trust any of them.”“I’m not very good at killing myself. I should probably STOP.”“I don’t have to know how to do it right to know you are doing it wrong.”“Being a prophet means you’re never going to experience the things other people experience in life…it means you’re going to be alone and your whole existence is defined by your alienation from the status quo. But if you can accept it…”“Anybody who thinks there aren’t informants in the Native American community does NOT know the history of the Native American community.”“What is healing all about? So much of it is about accepting shit you can’t control.”“I’m not saying I’m better than anyone. I’m unique. I serve a unique function. And right now my unique function is to try to make the people that are the least understood in our culture more understood. I can do that. And I’ve sacrificed everything – my life, my body, a family, stability, everything – in pursuit of this, now across my fifth platform, the fifth group of despised subcultures. And I’m just going to keep going until we get to all of them. I may put the brakes on when we get to pedophiles – I’m not sure I can make an argument for that – but I study the people that do. Because it’s all about compassion. It is ALL about learning compassion.” Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s guest is media theorist, culture critic, author, graphic novelist, documentarian, and podcaster Douglas Rushkoff! Chances are you’re a “digital native” banking on “social currency” and consuming “viral media” – which means that you are living in the world Doug prophesied for all of us back in the 1990s. I watched his debut documentary on social marketing, Merchants of Cool, in my college Introduction to Film class (which is how you know my teacher was, in fact, cool). His book Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now was one of the core inspirations for this podcast and its examinations of time in the digital age remain some of my most frequently-recommended writing. More recently his book Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus launched a vital conversation about how to make sure that the “superabundance” of digital society actually MAKES IT TO THE PEOPLE. And his podcast Team Human offers new insightful conversations every week about how we can sculpt a future for the 100%-ers – a world that welcomes everybody, that lets everyone in, that finds something meaningful for all of us to do and be.Doug’s written shelves on our new media environment and how the digital surround retrieves our magical antiquity. He’s issued potent cautions to us, that we must Program Or Be Programmed. He’s spent his entire life helping us find the bottom-up to complement the top-down that we’re stuck with…to help everyone be literate enough to make it in this modern world.And in this episode, he looks back on his life’s work, and forward to the great responsibility we bear to help imagine systems, cultures, and relationships for a more humane and equitable future…Doug’s podcast:http://teamhuman.fmDoug’s website:http://www.rushkoff.com/This week we’re also joined by guest co-host Michael Phillip of Third Eye Drops, our sister podcast, which I’m on A LOT – episodes 102, 88, 58, 44 with Doug Rushkoff, 38 with Niles Heckman, 28 with Bruce Damer, 21 with Erik Davis, 9 with Shane Mauss, 4 with Erik Davis, and this special mashup episode – and who has appeared on Future Fossils to talk about Westworld in Episode 14 and the Blockchain in Episode 52.We Discuss:• the ethical necessity of finding planet-scale solutions that work for ALL of us, not just a certain economic class; • the externalized ecological costs of Bitcoin; • how sigils and other ancient magical practices have been modernized for info warfare in the modern age; • how the culture of our global information economy retrieves the gods of antiquity; • the conflict of interests between our present and future selves; • the problem with futurists as propagandists and how we use “the future” as a way to manipulate people;• and more!Doug Quotes:“The aspect of the blockchain that is the most real at this point is the environmental destruction…the smartest scientists I know have given up on the environment. They’re saying, ‘Let’s just have dinner. This is it.’ If that’s the case, then it feels like every conversation about blockchain has to start and end with that. It’s like, ‘Okay, while we’re destroying the planet with technology, isn’t it an interesting model for this and that…?’”“It’s all just sigil magic on a certain level…although now you can express it through code, instead of just alchemy.”“As far as the virtual is actual, the virtual is tied to our actual well-being. So thanks to cyberspace, we have a place where all of that symbolic activity becomes real – or at least as real as we’re willing to make this stuff. Your FICO score is on there. This is the landscape that’s defining our reality. So it turns programmers into potential magicians of unprecedented power.”“The gods that we are looking at today a re subsets of capitalism. They are really more unintended consequences of people looking to game the system, than they are the natural flowering of some higher power, higher agenda. So we’re in a similar relationship to those things, but we don’t want to be re-enacting those things. We want to be, if anything, recognizing them and creating alternatives.”“Psychologically, they found that people relate to their own future selves the same way they relate to a stranger. So the person you’re saving retirement money for is just some old guy. So on some level, I don’t really care so much if that person is suffering in the cold, because I want an iPhone X. So screw him.” “Especially in the heady days of early WIRED Magazine, where they’re saying, ‘Look! Everything’s changing! The tsunami’s coming! You better hire some futurists to tell you where it’s going or you’re all going to die’…I was arguing that it’s fine, that all futurists are propagandists of a certain sort. So if I’m going to be a futurist, I’m going to propagandize a world of peace and love and the egalitarian sensibility that we’re all moving into, NOT a long stock market boom of infinite wealth for venture capitalists.” Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week we chat with the philosopher and sociologist John Danaher about the book Robot Sex: Social & Ethical Implications, a fascinating collection of academic articles on our sexbot future he just co-edited with Neil McArthur. (John also runs the blog Philosophical Disquisitions, which has been an awesome resource for deep thinking online for over a decade.)https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/robot-sexhttp://philosophicaldisquisitions.blogspot.comhttp://thefutureofsex.netChances are good you’ve seen the “Don’t Date Robots!” public service announcement from the cartoon Futurama, and probably Björk’s “All Is Full of Love” music video. Maybe you’ve seen Her or Ex Machina or Spielberg’s AI. And let’s not forget the Femmebots in Austin Powers. But does any of this media, for or against, paint a realistic portrait of the impact of machines on human intimacy?Subscribe on Apple Podcasts • Stitcher • Spotify • iHeart RadioJoin our Facebook Discussion Group!In this episode, John and I talk about:• “The cognitive niche” and what separates human beings from other species and (maybe) AI• How would a world of sexbots change dating and marriage?• The de-coupling of sex for intimacy and companionship and sex for reproduction• …and how sexbots might actually bring us BACK to a more naïve or primitive state in which we don’t regard sex and fertility as primarily associated• What happens if we can hack the brain to make anything an erogenous zone?• The radiating diversity of sexual strategies as we move into crazier transhuman terrain…• The breakdown of heteronormative society and the emergence of LGBTQ sexbots• Will sexbots make human sexwork more or less desirable?• Can sexbots help sexual deviants channel their socially unacceptable urges into more acceptable behaviors?• What about LOVING robots? Can we ever be convinced the love is mutual?• Is the question of robot free will moot because we don’t even have free will??• Is our dismissal of robot consciousness just like the earlier forms of dismissal of personhood in racism and sexism and speciesism?• Is robot sex a red herring?• Loving AI would not be compatible or sensible with the goals of transhumanists, who want perfect control over their environment…• And more!“As soon as we’ve been making things, we’ve been making things for sexual reasons. You can pretty much trace this throughout history: we get the first mechanical vibrators at pretty much the same time as the Industrial Revolution…the technology of sex has always gone hand in hand with other developments in technology.”“All the doubts and skepticism you could have about a relationship with a sufficiently sophisticated robot…you could have all the same metaphysical doubts and worries about a human partner.”STAY TUNED for next week's episode with media theorist Douglas Rushkoff and Michael Phillip of Third Eye Drops Podcast! Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s guest is independent culture critic John David Ebert – mythologist, philosopher, art historian, author of twenty-six books, and co-founder (with John Lobell) of http://cultural-discourse.com. We talk about the rich mythological references of Blade Runner 2049 in light of the larger – and very urgent – matter of mechanizing human reproduction and the (actually rather ancient) male quest to appropriate the mysteries of the goddess…Here’s John’s Blade Runner 2049 essay:http://cinemadiscourse.com/blade-runner-2049/John’s awesome YouTube channel:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC5B4tbk3U40S4q_3Qt-cVgQJohn has a knack for connecting very different sources across civilizations and millennia, anchoring this conversation about a modern science fiction masterpiece in a transcultural Big Story of the evolution of human consciousness. (Listen if you liked Episodes 42 & 43 with William Irwin Thompson on planetary culture, Episode 38 with Marya Stark on reclaiming the feminine mysteries, Episode 18 with JF Martel on art and reality, and Episode 14 with Michael Phillip on WESTWORLD.)John David Ebert Quotes:“Every new cosmology makes new machines possible.”“I’m interested to hear about utopian projects…because after all, we’re going to need them.”We Discuss:- Marshall McLuhan’s work on Sputnik’s technological enclosure of the planet and the end of “nature” (not to mention “natural catastrophes”);- How poets and artists make visible the “invisible environment” of subliminal information about each age;- Art’s revelation of cosmology through history, from nested heavenly spheres in medieval religious art to the newly-opened skies of Dutch realists to our anxious re-immersion in the closed infinity of the Anthropocene as depicted by H.R. Giger;- The transition from worship of the Earth Mother to the Sky Father, and the centuries-long struggle to control the mysteries of birth and death with science;- The connection between Niander Wallace in 2049 and Enke, sumerian trickster creator god;- The difficulty of replicating ecosystems in space for those “off-world colonies”;- “Here There Be Tygers,” Jurassic Park, and how monsters (as avatars of the pissed-off Great Mother) disappeared from the Renaissance world maps but make a new appearance in hypermodernity, thanks to genetic engineering;- Akhenaten’s experiment in monotheistic sun god worshipping utopia;- What should we do with the 100% certainty that our cosmopolitan super-cities will all soon be underwater, and it’s time to rapidly escalate our alt-civilization experiments?- The evolution of civilizations, from early revelation to imperial phase to decline;- The rhyme of history between Ancient Rome and Modern America;- The retrieval of shamanism and the re-establishment of a polar civilization in the late 21st Century;- The lineage between Pacific Northwest spirit-travel shamanism and contemporary Californian VR avatar science fiction and superhero stories;- And more! Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week: Science Fiction Übermenschen & A Critique of Space Colonization with film scholar Barry Vacker, a professor at Temple University in Philadelphia. We talk about the critique of contemporary science fiction cinema in his new book, Specter of the Monolith – pointing past the spiritual shortcomings of our relationship to space, and toward a future human being that has both grown in both technology and wisdom.Barry's Essays:http://medium.com/@barryvacker Subscribe:Apple Podcasts • Stitcher • Spotify • iHeart RadioJoin our Facebook Discussion Group!We Discuss:• How contemporary science fiction (including Blade Runner 2049) fails to live up to the promise of 2001: A Space Odyssey and articulate a transcendent vision for the future of humanity.• The role of the machine in a complete science fiction spirituality.• The different “übermenschen” presented in 2001, Altered States, Lawnmower Man, and Watchmen.• How Ancient Aliens hijacked the 2001 narrative about extraterrestrial involvement in human evolution.• How superheroes replaced gods in secular society after Nietzsche declared us the victors of the “Humans vs. God” match.• The role of the Cold War in cementing the different future visions of the United States and Russia/China.• The danger of looking to charismatic leaders of industry like Elon Musk for moral guidance in how we should enter space (specifically, extractive capitalism as the model for space migration).• The possibility and importance of preserving the Moon and Mars wilderness protection areas• …or is it our moral responsibility to spread life throughout the cosmos?• Barry’s critique of Interstellar as a film for “spore bearing” humans as opposed to “space faring” humans• Will it take an economic transition to prepare us for ethical space migration? Or a philosophical transition? Or are those not even different things?• The cultural importance of stargazing and astronomy – the sublime as the meeting place of the infinite and the infinitesimal – where awe, terror, and transcendence join without getting deities involved• The necessity for the human species to have “an explosion of awareness” – non mystically, non religiously• Space tourism: net good, or net evil? Can we reproduce the experience with VR?• Can we (or SHOULD we) baptise extraterrestrials? (Short answer: not without their informed consent?)• Colonialist and anticolonialist narratives in Avatar• Is our lack of rites of passage the reason we see a vastly disproportionate representation of “adulto-lescent” sci fi narratives?• Is Blade Runner 2049 a feminist film? Even though it fails the Bechdel test?Barry Quotes:“The superhero has emerged to make us feel like we’re still worth saving, to give us a moment of salvation at the movie theater – because when we walk out, we realize our political figures have no answers.”“2001 [is] seen as the prototypical Greatest Space Film Ever, but if you pay close attention, it’s showing a vision of space TOURISM. But when they show you the Moon, they’re not pillaging it. They’re not strip mining it. I think it’s completely ludicrous to think that we should be strip mining the Moon.”“The idea that we should be terraforming Mars in Earth’s own image…I mean, how narcissistic can you get?”“It’s time to give up these tired narratives of deities and industrial exploitation and move towards a scientific and artistic appreciation of these planets. And I don’t see that anywhere on the horizon. Very few people are questioning these tribal narratives.”“In Ridley Scott’s The Martian, there’s very little appreciation of the actual beauty of the PLANET, and in fact, Matt Damon says, ‘F Mars. I’m going to conquer this place.’ And we never see him looking at the dark skies. He would be the single human who would have had the greatest view of the skies EVER. And we don’t see any of that in The Martian. All we see is, ‘How can we transform the world’s resources into surviving?’ And that makes The Martian a very smart film, but it has a poverty of the imagination.”“I’m opposed to the propagation of human stupidity in the cosmos, nearby or faraway. I’m not opposed to us going to Mars or the Moon…but we should go as an enlightened species. We should go as space-farers, not merely spore-bearers. If we don’t alter this narrative, we know what we’re going to have: it’ll be literally ‘X Games: Moon.’ ‘The Real Housewives of Mars.’”“There’s something to be said for facing the universe as it is as best we can. Acknowledging our limitations and our humility, but also our aspirations to be more enlightened and more aware of and sensitive to our origins and our destiny, whatever it might be.”“In the quest for our meaning in the massive universe, we’ll find our destiny.” Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

David Bronner, heir to Dr. Bronner's Soap Company, discusses his advocacy for psychedelics and visionary culture. Topics include iboga experiences, epigenetic trauma inheritance, and the impact of his grandfather's firefighting foam. The podcast also explores gender norms, political engagement, and reflections on life advice for future generations.

[NOTE: We had a publishing error last week and most subscribers missed Episode 61 with Jamaica Stevens on Crisis, Rebirth, and Transformation! Definitely worth going back to listen to this awesome chat.]David Krantz is a personal nutrition and genetics coach, sound therapy technician, and electronic music producer based in Asheville, NC. http://david-krantz.com Subscribe to this show:Apple Podcasts • Stitcher • SpotifyJoin our Facebook Discussion Group This week we chat about genetics – specifically how different gene variations in people affect the way we experience cannabis. We’re coming up on a revolution in biotech and agriculture that will soon make it a possibility to grow gene-tailored strains of cannabis to suit YOUR DNA specifically…until then, though, here is your primer on how to dance with Mary Jane in ways that work WITH, not AGAINST, you.(David is a repeat guest from Future Fossils Episode 0010, when he chatted with us about the future of electronic music, plant intelligence, and tripping with cats and modular synthesizers. Be sure to check that one out also!) We Discuss: • CYP2C9 - a liver enzyme that breaks down THC - and how the amount your body produces will determine how high you get from edibles, your ability to pass a drug screening, etc.• How learning about our genetic differences helps us develop tolerance and acceptance of each other’s very different needs and bodies• COMT, a gene responsible for dopamine breakdown, and how which variant of this gene you possess determines cannabis-induced memory loss and alteration of time perception• ATK1, a gene whose variants determine how “psychotomimetic” (ie, trippy) your response to cannabis will be, and whether or not it will exacerbate schizophrenic symptoms• How it is, and isn’t, helpful for the law to regard cannabis primarily as a medicine• APOE, a gene that heavily influences Alzheimer’s Disease, not in isolation but depending on whether or not you eat a lot of saturated fats or exercise• How we must revolutionize education and accreditation in an age of digital learning, so that we can deploy as much healing intelligence as possible• Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms, or SNPs, and how these one-letter changes in a gene can make a huge difference• David’s critique of cannabis studies that DON’T break down research subject populations down into genetic subgroups, and reveal the researchers’ biases• The need for “cultural interoperability” in our discussions about cannabis research, “across the aisle” between scientists for and against its legalization• AND Coffee and Chaga mushrooms and more – enacting complex mutually supportive benefits• Which gene tests David likes best, and best practices for privacy with your genetic data• The future of genomic science’s influence on cannabis horticulture and use Quotes: “There are probably some people that shouldn’t smoke weed.” “I feel very qualified to help the people that I’m helping, and having the red tape of, ‘You have to be a medical professional or you can’t talk about this stuff at all,’ doesn’t make sense for where we’re going – because I can listen to 2000 hours of podcasts, like I did when I was working at Moog, and feel like I’ve really upped my understanding of some things. Maybe that can help other people besides myself.” “I’ve become increasingly self-aware of the way I feel about people who disagree with me…” “There’s no such thing as the perfect human diet.” Related Links: Kerri Welch on dopamine and time perception https://textureoftime.wordpress.com/2015/08/30/dopamine-and-traction-between-internal-and-external-time/ Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

This week’s guest is the inspirational badass Jamaica Stevens, key organizer for the Reinhabiting the Village project and Lucid University, and this show’s first pregnant guest (at the time of recording). We dive immediately into the deep end of our half-finished collective birthing process and how to navigate the difficult transition we’re all going through… http://www.jamaicastevens.com/ http://reinhabitingthevillage.com/jamaica-stevens/https://www.facebook.com/LucidUniversity/ We Discuss: • The collective ass-kicking and humbling and veil-lifting that’s upon us• Can America break up with itself and stay friends?• What is “the global village” in an age as splintered as ours?• Cooperative leadership and transcending the hero’s journey with its emphasis on individual growth and development• How to let go of a dream or vision when it’s time to let it die• How to process the grief of our ancestors, of our alienation and loss of place and undigested trauma• Grief as a teacher and a healer• Being born and reborn, again and again and again• How initiation needs both witness and community• Why we need elders for our rites of passage• How to get out of anthopocentric thinking about wisdom and connect to the vast majority of wisdom in the non-human world - looking to nature and asking it to teach us• Getting out of the mental attitude that we will understand the paradox…and BECOMING the paradox• The Epoch of the Steward and The Epoch of the Sage• Become what you already are Quotes: “Birth is not pretty. It’s not rainbows and unicorns. It’s ecstatic and one of the most profound experiences, but it’s also right there at the edge of life and death…there’s something so primal and cosmic at the same time about it, it will transform you.” “Only when we start embracing the responsibility of self and true accountability, to get into the shadow of our own beauty and tragedy and really get into our woundedness and limitation, and get into our healing on a personal level, and then start to work that on an interpersonal and community level, and learn better skills and tools for navigating conflict instead of avoiding conflict…” “Stop, drop, and roll, people. Put the fire out. Bring a little water. Go slow. Breathe deep. Own your shit. See another and find the connection of this incredible humanity that we all share.” “They’re going to look at me and say, ‘When the world was burning, what did you do? Did you keep planting trees? Did you learn to wield well your resources? Did you give up on us? Did you give up on your future and the potential for other generations to learn from the tragedies that we’ve created as humanity? Did you wizen up and face that so you don’t keep handing trauma down to the next generation? Did you become conscious?” “We ARE vulnerable. Interdependence is non-negotiable. And actually, your heart is liberated when you finally surrender to feeling.” “Our resistance actually creates more trauma than our learning to surrender.” “If we humble ourselves we might be able to soften and become pliable enough to find our way through this pressure point. You can’t stop it…how do you embrace it? How do you get on board with this rite of passage that we’re having and leverage it to make the most mighty moves you can?” “There’s no such thing as a brand new fresh beginning that isn’t in context or related to that which has been – and yet, we cannot go into uncharted territory trying to use a map from that which we’ve already mapped, thinking that that’s somehow going to guide us into something we’ve never experienced before.” “Looking only to the past will not get us into our future, but if we avoid looking to the past, our future will be riddled with the same mistakes.” “Would you plant trees that you’ll never eat the fruit of?” Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe

 Sean Esbjörn-Hargens is one of the sharpest and most insightful people I know, and an globally-recognized expert and pioneer in the emerging meta-discipline of integral theory and practice.  The former chair of John F. Kennedy University’s Integral Studies department, co-author (with Michael Zimmerman) of Integral Ecology, co-founder (with Mark Forman) of the international Integral Theory Conference, and now in his post-academic life, head of MetaIntegral a training and consulting company specializing in the design of wisdom economies. “Expand your story! Expand your position! Expand your sense of self identity as to what you’re doing and why. Because you’re already doing it.”Become conscious of the value and benefits you’re already providing the world – and then amplify that – by digging this great conversation…http://metacapital.net/iceland-seminar/ https://integrallife.com/integral-ecology-uniting-multiple-perspectives-natural-world/ https://www.amazon.com/Integral-Ecology-Uniting-Multiple-Perspectives/dp/1590307674Subscribe to this show: Apple Podcasts • Stitcher • Spotify Join our Facebook Discussion Group(Cover painting by David Titterington.) We Discuss:• Sean’s early interest in the scientific study of animal consciousness: philosophy, biology, AND psychology• The intersection of human consciousness, worldviews, and values systems – and how nature appears differently to everyone• Discovering Ken Wilber’s integral philosophy and its critiques of the retro-romantic “Back to the Garden” ideology of deep ecology and eco-feminism• How many different approaches to the natural world are there?• The problem of academia’s failure to properly accommodate trans-disciplinary, meta-disciplinary, synthetic, integral thought• Economy as a sub-category of Ecology• The Complexity Gap: the gap between our level of consciousness and our ability to manage complexity on one hand, and the amount of complexity we find ourselves in, on the other• Simplicity on the other side of complexity: moving ecological and integrative thinking into business and organizational development• What is Meta-Capitalism?• Beyond the reductionism of triple bottom line thinking: purpose• Integrating the sentience of other organisms into our understanding and practice of ecology• Bringing the inner worlds of the first-person and second-person back into science and organizational development: experience, emotion, mutual understanding, and purpose• Taking multiple perspectives on wealth, value, and the many forms of capital: not just the external metrics but the feelings and experiences of wealth, poverty, and power inequality• How to teach organizations to see the value they’re already generating – and unaware of – so that they can serve a larger population with a clearer identity and more coherent actions• The emergence of value-accounting software that can help us track impact across the myriad domains of capital• Organizational coaching as collective shadow work and a kind of psychedelic therapy at the level of the group• Making subject object: making perspectives an object of awareness and moving from experience to insight in meditation, coaching, and any area of personal or collective transformation• Anchoring integration in the heart and gut – not just the brain, but really letting understanding sink and ripen in our feelings and our flesh and blood• How learning to play the violin and sing at the same time can be a profound somatic practice of meta-level integration• Dance and martial arts practices as a complement to being super heady…differentiating and integrating the body and developing an “eco-somatics” for moving consciously in the world Select Quotes:“It’s really only at the limits of the postmodern orientation that you begin to see the importance of integration. So as a culture and as a global society, we’re just now really entering into an integrative mode where the overwhelm of the information is forcing us to adapt strategies of integration.”“More and more of our challenges and issues require some mode of integrative thinking and action.”“There are lots of different kinds of value, and if you leave out one kind, you’re really doing a disservice to reality. It’s actually a violence against the cosmos.”“Environmental rah-rah really serves a purpose, but until we really wrestle with capitalism, it’s almost like, ‘What’s the point?’”“It’s more a clash of worldviews than it is a clash of facts. And how different worldviews relate to those facts.”“How would our science of ecology change if we actually recognize the sentience of the organisms that are part of that ecology?”“The resistance is good because it shows that you’re in the right ballpark. You want there to be resistance. I don’t really waste my time trying to convince anyone of anything. I try and work with people where there’s at least a basic level of interest, and then work with the resistance they have.”“Things are going to get more fragmented, and things are going to get more integrated. And those two things paradoxically exist side by side.”“Fragmentation usually has a negative connection because we think of it as dissociation. But if we think of fragmentation as differentiation, and we think of differentiation and integration, those two things go hand in hand developmentally.”“Working with the meta-impact framework is, in a sense, doing shadow work for an organization.”“I really want my life to be the transmission of integrated head, heart, and hara.” Get bonus content on PatreonSupport this show http://supporter.acast.com/futurefossils. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit michaelgarfield.substack.com/subscribe